Wednesday, September 24, 2008

We hear a lot of fundamentalist, evangelical horror stories coming out of the U.S. and everytime I'm close to losing all hope for the people down there, news like this reaches my ears.

A group of baptists in Arkansas were doing their thing, which in this case means protesting against 'baby-killers and fags', when they were challenged by a group of angry pirates. These turned out to be members of the Central Arkansas Pastafarians who decided to make use of the coinciding talk like a pirate day.

As the (too) brief article says, they garnered all the media attention and the fundamental fuckwits packed up and went home; this means there must be footage out there, but so far I can't find it. Very hopeful though.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Between the marathon still going on in the States and this little snappy sprint up here, seems the entire continent has a fever, to which the only prescription, is more voting. Bleh. It's a nasty, dreary, wrist-slitting topic - however, as I'm here just until early polls open and happen to be in my riding for the first time in three elections, I'mma give it a go. Get up in there.

So I had to review my knowledge of the national parties. The Undecided is a half (or maybe quarter) decent place to start but I found my mind wandering more towards a hatred of flash scripts than platform policies. So much for the Internet.

I've decided to take a step back and approach from a simpler perspective, and one I feel more comfortable with. Thinking about literary definitions.

Conservative Con*serv"a*tive, n.

1. One who, or that which, preserves from ruin, injury,innovation, or radical change; a preserver; a conserver.

2. One who desires to maintain existing institutions andcustoms; also, one who holds moderate opinions inpolitics; -- opposed to revolutionary or radical.[1913 Webster]

From my point of view this is a damn silly name for a major party. There's a lot wrong in society, the country and the world; the worst idea is that we should hold innovation and change back, or worse, roll it back to where it was in the past.

So, no Conservative.

Back to the Internet; I remembered reading an interesting piece about Danny Williams' ABC campaign in Newfoundland, which in turn led me to an article questioning the legality of online vote swapping.

So I still have a week and a half to decide, but I've been talking about swapping with a guy in Calgary, since he lives in Harper's Calgary riding. I'm looking at voting Liberal for him (it's a tight race here in Oakville but the Lib's usually beat the Con's) and he can put in a symbolic/funding vote for NDP or Green for me.

and PS - much as I like the concept, I effected this without the aid or use of Facebook .

Sunday, September 14, 2008

"Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer."

Friday night David Foster Wallace hung himself in LA.There's not much I care to say about it ... beyond how much he inspired and affected me, there's also the quality of his writing which tends to make anything I might write seem irrelevant.I now would like to finally finish his biography on infinity, but it's in a box, in storage, across the continent. Perhaps I owe it to him to pick up A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

They Did It: A group of (not so) mad scientists in Switzerland switched on the Large Hadron Collider and "the first beam ... was successfully steered around the full 27 kilometres of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at 10h28 this morning."

In my limited understanding, this means the cumulation of 15-20 yr.s of scientific preparation, the completion of Newton's original journey into the field of gravity, the equivalent in physics of man walking on the moon in astronomy, and, well, the possibility of a man-made and controlled black hole.

But don't take it from me, watch this highly informative dharma initiativerap video:

Saturday, September 6, 2008

My lovely turtle ('zelva') tattoo, I had imprinted a few days before my 26th birthday. This was in Praha, Czech Republic.

Earlier this week, cruising down Kerr with Erix, we ran into old man Jenkins at a stop light.

Yesterday, Jenkins met a girl at his climbing gym, and, being recently single, made plans to hangout with her.

Tonight, I went drinking with him and later we went out to chill with this girl, Kim, in Hamilton.

Over the course of the evening, we start talking tattoos. This one is hidden under my shirt, but I explain my wrist tattoo, and she explains hers (christian origins). But after explaining the meaning, she tells me that she travelled all the way to Prague just to get it, from the most respected female tattoo artist in the world.